A Matter of Self
by Acci0Sanity
Summary: [Weepy DH spoilers]  One twin tries to come to terms with what he is without the other.


_Ok, so I have just about managed to stop CRYING about everything I encountered in DH, although I actually finished it at 9am on the 21st and so should, I guess, have not been crying for a while now...I dunno, it just had that effect on me..._

_Right, so this fic is largely a closure thing, for me, since I really do not think Fred's death was coped with at all well, in terms of how shattered we all know George would have been by it...he didn't actually reappear after we saw him "kneeling at Fred's head"...did he?? Agh...I'm also trying to work up the courage to do a tonks/remus DH centric fic...although I'm not quite there yet..._

_Anyway, read, review, come sob your DH grievances to me...whatever you like..._

_Disclaimer: To my lasting regret, Harry Potter e.t.c. is not mine...because if it did, there would have been a hecka less deaths, twenty more pages on the epilogue, a thousand more multicoloured wolfcub babies and Neville and Luna would have got married on top of a mountain...or maybe Dean and Luna...was I the only one who saw that in DH?_

* * *

**A Matter of Self**

Thinking back, George was never entirely sure whose idea it had been to start _Weasley's Wizard Wheezes_ in the first place. People had always tended to think that he and Fred simply thought and acted as an undivided unit, coming up with ideas, words, sentences, as one. Siamese twins, joined at the brain, the heart, wherever. But that was the problem. No one really _knew_.

When he returned, he would wander around the shop after closing time, with the milky soft light from the Diagon Alley streetlamps beginning to seep through the huge front window, punctuating the bruise-black evening sky outside and leaving puddles of dusty light on the shop floor, and he was still not sure. Absently running his fingers over packets and boxes of tricks and jokes – love potions, puking pastilles, everlasting fireworks – he would ponder incessantly over whose idea this had been and who had suggested that. Had they really come up with everything together, just like that? Had they really had that mental connection which allowed their brains to think as one, which allowed them to simply be two incarnations of the same person? But all this seemed simply to drag him further and further away from the truth, until he couldn't remember who had said what, who had done what, and he began to wonder whether there had ever been a Fred at all, whether or not he hadn't just invented everything he saw before him, whether Fred was just some imaginary outpost of his own personality.

He didn't return to the shop, not at first.

* * *

Everybody knew, at least on some level, that however deep and genuine their own grief, they really couldn't understand what George was going through. This should, he reflected, have been helpful. People were sensitive, extra-careful, tip-toed around him as though he was made of glass and tried very hard not to mention Fred in front of him. But all this achieved was to make him more confused, angrier. _What_ had he lost? _Who_ had he lost? He felt like he couldn't understand anything. He saw himself in mirrors and shop windows and thought it might as well be Fred. If they really were just one person, one unit, as everyone seemed to think, then why on earth should it make a difference if there was one or two?

"To lose a _twin_." He once overheard Hermione saying tearfully, huddled in the arms of a white-faced Ron "I can't even _imagine_…like a part of yourself…"

He felt lost in shock and confusion and disbelief. He couldn't even feel his grief. All he felt was a dull, aching, non-stop thud of incomprehension. Incomprehension of what he had been with Fred and what, presumably, he now was without him.

"I'm George." He said, furiously, to the mirror in their old room at The Burrow, where the whole family had been whisked back to after the worst of the fall-out at Hogwarts was over. "I'm _George._"

He tried to turn away, but as he did, the hole where his ear had been was removed from his line of vision and Fred stared back at him.

It was strange, uncomfortable, being around everyone. As much as everyone was at pains to be as tender and sympathetic towards him as they could, he somehow felt that his very presence, reminding them all of Fred in the most obvious and inescapable of ways, was tactless, thoughtless, almost cruel.

He felt his mother's tearful eyes were never-ceasingly on him and found himself wishing he was Fred; that George, whoever he was, had died instead, so he wouldn't have to cope with his mother's tears and his father's silences, his brother's gasps of momentary shock if they suddenly caught sight of him and thought he was someone else, his sister's painful understanding.

Most of all, he simply wanted to get away from himself, whoever he was. He was trapped in a body which never gave him a moment's peace, which made it its eternal job to remind him of his twin. Fred followed him everywhere. His hands poured George's cereal, his eyes gazed back at George in the mirror, his body fitted neatly into George's clothes, his legs ran when George tried to escape.

Far too soon, he felt he simply had to get away. It had only been four days, Fred had not even been buried yet, and yet he felt The Burrow was suffocating him. Everything around him seemed to turn in on him, childhood memories and present griefs impossible to escape from. Everything about The Burrow was mutely suggestive of his young life, of childhood dreams and holidays, of crowded Christmases and rainy days and sunny afternoons – and everything about his childhood, absolutely everything, led back to Fred. He tried to find a memory, any memory, in which Fred did not figure and in which he was just George. George alone. But there wasn't one. Everything, from the very beginning to the very end, was Fred-and-George.

He didn't know how to _be_ just George.

People had never looked at them as separate entities. People had never considered the idea that they could be separate human beings with separate emotions and separate thoughts. They were just Fred-and-George. And George didn't blame them; he had never really thought of himself as Just George either. Never really wanted anything else.

Fred had always been there. Fred. To share his jokes and fears and reply to everything he said. Fred. Who would sleep in the bed next to him in his room at The Burrow, in his dorm at Hogwarts, in the flat above the shop. They would fall asleep looking at each other, every single night, even at Hogwarts, where they would leave a chink in their hangings open. They would grin at each other from their separate beds, blue eyes watching each other with a quiet, sleepy laughter still bubbling there, until it became unclear whose eyes were whose, and they fell asleep. It is always impossible to pinpoint the moment when one falls asleep, and George often wondered whether or not either ever fell asleep before the other, whether there was ever a moment when one twin was alone and separate; his own person.

He returned to the shop.

* * *

He really didn't know why he did this. It was an entirely random decision. Certainly, if he had really wanted to get away from memories of his twin, the shop, which had been their universe for years, was probably not the best place to start. Yet he couldn't help it somehow. He just had to be there.

Coming back in was the worst part. The shop had been closed for several days and there was a biting wind driving past outside which chilled him to the bone and made his hands clumsy as he fumbled with the keys. Letting himself in, at last, he gazed around at the bleak scene which met him. The brightly-coloured packets and products all around him seemed duller, somehow, more prosaic, and there was a fine layer of week-old dust settling cosily over everything. Making sure the sign on the door still read _Closed_, he pulled his coat off (Fred's body, clad in a non-descript shirt and jeans, materialised from beneath the wool) and ran a hand through his shaggy red hair (Fred's hair. His hair. Two sets of the same, which always seemed to curl and tangle in exactly the same places. How could there be a logical explanation for that?). He gazed around at the shop he and his twin had masterminded and willed himself to feel something, anything. Yet all he felt was a dull sense that it was still _Weasley's Wizard Wheezes_, that there was still a person to run it, that nothing had changed.

He slouched towards the door which led to the stairs up to the flat, wondering vaguely whether or not Fred had left any of that potato salad he liked so much in the fridge.

A few minutes later, the salad lay untouched on the kitchen table upstairs. George had forgotten he didn't like it. Although how could that be? He was sure Fred had.

* * *

Years seemed to pass. Centuries, although in reality it was only two days.

He knew his mother had tried to get in touch with him, as had Ron, Bill and his father. But daily raps on the door and calls through the letterbox downstairs went ignored, mail was left unanswered and the protection put on the shop by the Order, almost a year ago, somehow prevented anyone apparating right in. So, George was left to himself. A feeling he still couldn't get his head around.

Sometimes, he would find himself getting muddled. He would hold long conversations with himself, often in front of a mirror, calling one side Fred and the other side George. He would pretend that people were right – that it didn't matter which was which, which was alive and which as dead, because they were the same. They thought the same, they acted the same, they _were_ the same. And if one was gone, that still left a carbon copy behind. No great loss.

He would lie on his side at night, cramped and uncomfortable in the tiny bed he always slept in in the flat above the shop, averting his eyes from the empty bed beside him, staring instead into the mirror on the wardrobe door. He would bury the hole where his ear should have been in the pillow until he looked like he could still have two, one just hidden in the bedding. And it could have been Fred, staring back at him from his own bed, just as he had always down. And if he stared long enough, he could almost begin to lose track of whether he was Fred or George, whether he was alive or dead, whether it mattered at all.

It wasn't until the day he realised it would be a week-tomorrow that his had twin died, that he suddenly seemed to succumb to the great exhaustion which had been threatening for days. He couldn't fight it any more. He didn't want to think about who he was and who he had lost and where he was and why. All he wanted was for someone else to take everything he didn't want to think about out of his hands.

He opened the door when it knocked, that day.

In truth, he allowed whoever it was to rap on the glass pretty solidly for a good five minutes before he managed to muster up the energy to slouch downstairs and find out who it was. If he had had anything left in him at all, he might have been almost surprised to find Percy standing before him, his nose rather pink, his face and glasses wet from the rain George hadn't even been aware was smattering feebly down against the windows outside. It was cold. Though nearly July, it felt like November.

His brother blinked at him, the watery blue light of the rainy late afternoon casting long, strange shadows across his thin, pale face. George stared out at him, one hand limp on the door handle.

"You came to the door." Percy said, looking taken aback.

"I can go away again if that's not what you wanted." George replied. He wondered if that would have been a joke in different circumstances. He wondered if Fred's presence would have _made_ it a joke.

"No – no! Wait…" Percy's momentary look of stunned confusion had already been replaced by one of purpose. "I want to come in."

"Fine."

He didn't know what else he could say. He let his brother in, closing the door soundlessly behind him, watching as Percy stripped off his coat, gloves and hat, shaking out his red hair, longer and less perfect than he had known it to be, and blinking behind his glasses.

He jumped up onto the dusty shop counter, watching his older brother compose himself.

"George, when was the last time I told a joke?"

He blinked. Percy was looking at him in all seriousness. This was not what he had expected.

"Er…what?"

"A joke. Do you remember when? Do you remember what it was?"

"I – what??"

Percy sighed, he adjusted his glasses slightly, chewing air reflexively as he seemed to ponder exactly how to get his meaning across.

"George, right before Fred…well, right before it happened…he said something to me. He – " Percy glanced up to see whether George was looking at him and found his brother's eyes fixed on his face, an unreadable expression in his eyes…in Fred's eyes. Percy made a slight choking noise and continued. "He…I had just said something to Thicknesse, you know, that idiot who the Death Eaters set up as Minister…and…and Fred said it was the first time he'd heard me joke since…well…he never finished the sentence…"

George felt cold. He knew, of course, why Fred had not finished his sentence, why Percy was trying not to mention it, but he so badly wanted to feel something, to feel anything, that he pushed him.

"Why didn't he finished his sentence?"

"Why-?" Percy blinked at him. George watched him stoically, ready for the babbling and the avoision. But, to his great surprise, Percy's eyes seemed to gleam with something like understanding behind his glasses. Understanding; that was something he hadn't seen in Percy for a long time.

"Because Rookwood…Rookwood killed him." Percy said, clearly and almost evenly.

George said nothing, an invitation for his brother to continue. "Anyway," said Percy, "I wondered whether you could finish Fred's sentence. You always did before."

George frowned. He could tell, dimly, that this question was too blunt and tactless for Percy simply to have wanted to ask it for its own sake. Percy had an agenda.

"You want me to tell you about the last time I can remember you making a joke?"

"Yes."

For some reason, George never even considered not doing his brother's bidding. Instead, he simply sat back on the counter and thought. He remembered many things. He remembered bewitching Percy's Head Boy badge with Fred so that it read _Pinhead Boy_. He remembered Fred dropping a stack of books on his head when Ginny told them about Percy's girlfriend. He remembered conspiring with Fred to find the perfect, all-purpose insult for Percy after he had the argument with their Dad and left. He remembered earlier days, younger days, when he, Fred and a six-year-old Ron had clustered around Percy, standing looking nervous in his too-big school robes, waiting to depart on the Hogwarts Express for the first time. He remembered them all jumping up and down, laughing and chattering. He remembered Percy's nervous face, Fred's laughing one - or was it his? But there was no sound to the memory. Nothing. He couldn't remember.

"I…I don't remember…Perce…I'm sorry, I don't – "

But Percy, for some reason, actually smiled.

"I know you don't."

George blinked, frowning at his brother.

"Percy I…I'm not entirely sure I get what you're on about…"

Percy was quiet for a moment, looking as though he was trying to work out how to say whatever he was going to say.

"Fred…Fred remembered a particular instance when I told a joke…" he eventually said, slowly "He remembered. He was going to tell me when. But you, George, you don't remember."

"Well…yeah, I'm sorry, Perce, but I've kind of had other things on my mind…" said George, finding it a little hard to believe that Percy could actually be berating him at a time like this.

"No! No, that's not what I mean." Said Percy, very quickly "No, I mean that…Fred…and you….you have different memories, don't you? Different minds. Different – "

And all at once, George knew exactly what his brother was driving at and felt a sudden surge of heat flood his chest and stomach.

"What I'm tying to say," said Percy, in a voice choked with meaning "Is that I know what it is you haven't been able to cope with. You _weren't_ Fred, George. I'm not demeaning your relationship; I know how close you were, I _know_ that it's still the same, that none of us will ever even be able to imagine what it can be like for you to lose him…but…at the same time…you're a person without him, George…and you can be a whole person again…in time…"

George stared at him, a million indefinable thoughts and emotions suddenly seeming to twist up inside his stomach. Somewhere, deep in the back of his brain, hummed a loud, alien shock of grief and understanding. Percy…of all his brothers, it was _Percy_, who had understood…_Percy_ who had seen what Fred meant to George and yet, at the same time, seen where George had lost himself, unable to detach himself from his dead twin…_Percy_.

And at the same time, dozens of things seemed to be clunking into place inside his foggy brain. Fred liked potato salad, George hated it. Fred remembered Percy's last joke, George had forgotten it. Fred had decided to run and fight with Percy, George had stayed nearer the Hall to duel with Rodolphus Lestrange. Fred had slept on his right to look at his twin, George had slept on his left.

"_You know, George." _A voice so like his own that it almost could have been him filled his mind _"I reckon we need to channel all this "experimenting" we've been doing, so to speak, into a more productive line."_

"_Productive?" _His own voice, the same and yet a shade different, guffawed back _"I'm ashamed of you, Fred. Never in a million years did __I think I would hear that word pass your lips!"_

Fred's laugh rippled through his own

"_Fear not, twin mine, I mean productive for us!"_

"_How so, mine twin?"_

"_Money-wise; that's how so."_

"_You have my attention."_

"_Well! What if we turn all these random ideas and things we keep coming up with…you know, the sweets that make you puke and that telescope thing that hits people and so on…and turn it into merchandise? What if we sell it? Like, start a business? We could make a bomb!"_

"_And seriously naff off Filch, to boot…"_

"_That's my twin!"_

"_Fred, I think we've got ourselves an ambition! God…there's another word I never thought I'd attach to us…"_

"_Excellent! Oh, hey…here's one for you. What's brown and sounds like a bell?"_

"_Er…"_

"_Dunnnnggg! Haha! Good, eh?"_

"_Feeble, my dear twin. Feeble."_

He remembered whose idea it had been. He remembered how his own thoughts had been entirely occupied with something else when Fred had come out with it. He remembered how impressed he had been. He even remembered the awful joke.

They _had_ been two different people. They had been two twins, not one person. But two twins who needed each other, two twins who were never, ever apart. He realised, all in a flash, that their separateness as people actually only made this loss worse. He had lost a friend, as well as a brother…lost the closest friend anyone could ever have. He had lost a part of himself, not simply a clone of himself. He had lost a separate person with separate ideas and emotions and feelings, a separate person who he could not just dig out from himself, because Fred had been himself. Fred had been wonderful.

He wanted Fred back so badly.

He could do nothing but gape, for several moments, until, with a shock, he felt a strange, salty liquid trickling down into his open mouth. It took him a couple of seconds to realise that he was crying; huge, fat tears which welled in his eyes like waves before crashing down over his cheeks in such a sudden and startling quantity that he had to bury his head in his sleeve, trying to wipe them away.

And suddenly, Percy was there, hugging him tightly, all embarrassment and restraint, all the bad-feeling and awkwardness of the past three years washed away, and George sobbed his loss and grief into his brother's shirt. Percy wept too, as he already had done so many times, wishing there was something more he could do.

Eventually, the storm calmed somewhat, and George was able to look up. He was suddenly achingly exhausted, not even able to muster up a single twinge of embarrassment for the scene which had just taken place. Percy had released him, and was now sitting beside him on the counter, looking less like Head Boy than he ever had in his life. George suddenly had an odd feeling; he actually looked like his brother, at last.

"You know what, Perce?" he said shakily "I may not remember the last time you joked, but I can tell you one thing. You're a human being, Percy! You _are _actually a human being! I don't think I've seen you being a human being since you were a fourth year!"

And Percy laughed; laughed far longer and louder than the remark really deserved.

For he knew that it was a real joke, George's own joke, at last.

* * *

"_Fred,_

_You were so much, mate, so much to me. So much to everyone, of course, but you were my twin. I could tell a million stories about the things we did and said that made our time together what it was, but then, it might not all be that suitable for an epitaph; plus, I think we're famous enough already, don't you?_

_Everything I have achieved, to this day, I put down to being the direct result of being your, shall we say, team-mate. We may have been two separate twins, but without you, absolutely nothing I have today would exist. You made me me, Fred, because I wasn't Just George, I was Fred-and-George, and we were invincible._

_But now, I guess, I will have to try to be Just George – and I promise you, I will try to make myself as Fred-and-George-ish as I possibly can. I'll just have to laugh twice as loudly and irritate everyone twice as much._

_I wish I had been there with you to the last, mate, because it just seems too weird that I wasn't. We were always together, you and me. But I suppose that, really, it doesn't matter, because in a way, even when we weren't together, we were, if you see what I mean._

_That's what I have to cling to now, the thought we all have to live with. Even though you're not here, we know you're here – coming up with stupid jokes that don't make sense and have stupid punchlines, because you think that just because we're Fred-and-George, we can get away with anything. Well, I promise you, Just George plans to do exactly the same thing._

_Here's thanking you for everything that was your idea, mate, and for everything that wasn't. Oh, and here's one: A Bear walks into a bar, holds up a hand and says – 'I want a packet of crisps and a………………….bottle of beer." – and the bartender says "Why the big Paws!". Geddit? It's funny because he has paws and he paused and…oh whatever, yours were worse._

_Hope it's fun, mate, wherever you are."_

The faces of the people clustered around the grave were pale and often tear-stained. There were many of them there, some of whom he recognised – Harry, standing beside a quietly weeping Ginny, Bill and Fleur, Charlie, Ron, his arms tightly around Hermione's waist, both of them with tears pouring down their faces, Luna, Dean, Seamus, Neville, Verity, their shop assistant, a shocked and silent Lee Jordan, a howling Hagrid, a rather austere-looking Auntie Muriel, Wood, Angelina and the rest of the old Gryffindor Quidditch team, McGonagall, Kingsley and rest of the surviving Order, Andromeda Tonks, who held a blue-haired baby tightly in her shaking arms, Percy, who stood right beside him, his mother, who was white but held his hand in a reassuringly firm grip, and his father, rigid and clench-jawed. They had watched him silently throughout his speech, which had been delivered in a calm and resolutely even voice, but it wasn't until he reached the very end that he realised that, in several corners, though the tears still fell, smiles wavered upwards, even a faint laugh or two. His mother clung more firmly to his hand as he concluded, and she gave him a tearful but glowing look. His father patted him on the back, his eyes full of emotion. Percy nodded, a strange light in his eyes. From all around, he felt a lift in the proceedings; people were smiling reminiscently, their faces glowing with a happiness combined with their grief. He found himself, inexplicably, smiling quietly. It was exactly what he had wanted. Fred would not have wanted it any other way. And if he knew anything, he knew Fred.

And so, the funeral drew to a close in the dying rays of the afternoon sun. And though smiles and jokes and tears and condolences still rang through the quiet air as people began to depart, George stayed silent and thoughtful, something he was not used to.

He saw Kingsley shaking hands with his father, saying something with a very sincere look in his eyes, before disapparating. He saw Bill comforting a weeping Fleur, a couple of tears creeping down his own scarred face. He saw Harry and Ginny clasping hands, silent and watchful. He saw Ron rocking Hermione gently in his arms as she sobbed into his collar. And suddenly he saw his mother coming towards him. Her tears still flowed and voice was shaking; yet somehow, she looked radiant.

"You did so well, George…it was…oh it was perfect."

She flung her arms around his neck and he hugged her back. And all at once, all the Weasleys seemed to be hugging together. His mother and father, Bill, Charlie, Percy, Ron, Ginny and himself. Harry, Hermione, Fleur, Hagrid and all those who remained stayed back a little, respectful of the privacy of the Weasleys' grief. There would, of course, be other griefs to attend to - Tonks and Remus were being buried tomorrow - yet this was a Weasley grief, and one they had to deal with now.

The hug ended, at length, as slowly, and for no reason at all, they found a laugh creeping up over them all. A combined laugh which rang out amongst the trees and echoed through the fading evening sky. For they knew it was what Fred would have wanted.

"Stupid bugger." Said Charlie, with a chuckle.

"D'you remember when you said you'd send me a Hogwarts toilet seat?" Ginny smiled at George, reminiscently

"And when you bewitched my Head Boy badge?" added Percy, as if it had never irked him at all

"And when you turned my teddy bear into a spider." Snorted Ron

"And the Unbreakable Oath." Sighed Mr Weasley, with a shake of the head.

"And the ton-tongue toffee!" laughed Bill

"Yeah." George grinned around at all of them, feeling suddenly and inexplicably peaceful. Harry, Hermione and Fleur had edged in, Harry quietly taking Ginny's hand again, Hermione resting her head on Ron's shoulder, Fleur sliding an arm around Bill's waist. His mum and dad had their own arms around each other, whilst Charlie and Percy stood together, silent and calm. It was, he reflected, just as it should be.

They all watched him, silently, as he turned to gaze down at his twin's grave, a hundred jokes and memories and laughs welling up inside him. And at last, he did not want to beat them down, for they were all encompassed perfectly in the legend carved below his twin's name on the little grey stone erected in his honour.

_Fred Weasley _

_1978 - 1998_

_Give her hell from us Peeves_

_Please R&R...I hope it wasn't too self-indulgent...I just needed to get it out..._

_xxxxxxxxxxxx_


End file.
